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Monday Meeting: Executive director of the Palm Beach Symphony

Finn, who joined the symphony last year, was the director of performance activities at the Lincoln Center and associate dean at The Juilliard School. A retired bassoonist himself and a graduate of Juilliard, Finn has performed around the world.

Name: Michael Finn

Age: 59

Hometown: Palm Beach and Wellfleet, Mass.

Education: University of Miami, The Juilliard School

Family: wife Rebecca who has a lifelong career in corporate retail; daughter Lauren, who works in human resources for Apple in New York.

About your organization: The mission of the Palm Beach Symphony Society is to engage, educate and entertain the greater community of the Palm Beaches through live performances of inspiring orchestral music.

We are a 501(c) 3 Not for Profit Corporation, now in our 39th season, with an annual budget of just under $1 million. The Palm Beach Symphony has a flexible roster of musicians that allow us to tailor our programming for the various venues in which we perform. Those venues include The Society of the Four Arts, the Flagler Museum, the Bethesda-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church, the Mar-a-Lago Club all on the island of Palm Beach and the Norton Museum and the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach and the Eissey Theatre in Palm Beach Gardens.

First paying job and what you learned from it: My first job was a starry affair that had me hooked at age 19. As a young bassoonist, I was offered a tour of Iceland with Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev. Bobby Fisher was also on our flight to Reykjavik so the paparazzi were everywhere. I realized then that I was in “show business.”

At the time of year there was only one hour of darkness in Iceland, and it seemed to me the energy of the artists, from dancers, musicians, and administrators was matched by the amount of sunlight. Everyone worked incredibly hard to make this tour a success. Lesson learned, love what you do and work hard at it!

First break in the business: I was sitting onstage at a rehearsal in Carnegie Hall, and on the break another musician in the orchestra came up to me and told me he was on the search committee for the performance dean at The Juilliard School. Would I be interested in the job? At first I thought this concept foreign to what I had been doing for 20 plus years as a performer, but the more I thought about it the more the job seemed like a good fit for me. I could draw on my experience as a performer and orchestra contractor and translate that to producer at an executive level.

How your business has changed: The recording industry has changed incredibly. From how albums are produced and sold, to how commercial jingles are produced, to where and at what rates film scores are produced. The concert side of the business has not changed that much. Ticket sales have never covered the cost of production so development offices have their hands full raising the vast amounts of money required to present a concert.

Best business book you ever read: The three recent books of Malcolm Gladwell.

Best piece of business advice you ever received: Play to the back row. You never know who’s sitting there.

What you tell young people about your business: Love what you do. You won’t get rich.

Many successful people learn from failure. Do you have a failure you can share and what you learned from it? I tried for a while to be Superman. I burned out.

What do you see ahead for Palm Beach County? My hope is that there is the desire to have performances at the highest levels sell out every hall in which they are presented. Quality hopefully sells itself.

Power lunch spot: Not my style. Where do I like to lunch? Poolside at the Colony Hotel, Palm Beach or Café Luxembourg, NYC.

Where we would find you when you’re not at the office: Walking on the beach. I get a lot of good thinking done there.

Favorite smartphone app: I’m old school and don’t pay attention to this. With a daughter who works for Apple, I must be quite the embarrassment.

What is your passion cause outside of work? My work is my cause. I promote the highest level of performance always. I want people to be as enchanted by the art form as I am.

What is the most important trait you look for when hiring? Enthusiasm and the ability to write (anything).